In the first year of implementing the ‘housing for all’ programme, formulated under the Centre’s Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY), the government has approved 43 projects for implementation that can yield 1,15,297 tenements for the economically weaker sections and lower income groups. A majority of these are to come up in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, where the shortage of affordable housing is the most acute and the Bahratiya Janata Party (BJP)-led state government promised to create 11 lakh low-cost tenements. These are spread across various villages of Virar, Kalyan and Thane.

However, even the number of houses sanctioned on paper is a far cry from the 2.71 lakh houses the government needs to approve and build under the scheme every year to meet its stated aim of 19 lakh units in seven years.

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The Maharashtra government formally adopted the Centre’s PMAY programme in December last year to be implemented in 51 cities across the state. The state government had in May 2015 declared its intention to build 19 lakh affordable housing by 2022 under PMAY, but stopped short of formally notifying the target on paper. Senior bureaucrats admitted that 19 lakh houses may be unrealistic without any other policy intervention. The government can hope to construct at the most 6.5 to 7 lakh tenements under the scheme, they said.

Hoping to speed up construction under PMAY, the government has announced a slew of concessions to government and semi-government agencies which take up such projects. These include land at a nominal price of one rupee per square metre, a 50% concession in land measurement fees, reduced development charges, a lower stamp duty for the first allotment of tenements, etc. The government has also proposed to make more land available for PMAY housing by unlocking no-development zones and agricultural land in smaller cities, referred as the D-Class municipal corporations.